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PR Mi Iv/auk e e , Vli sc o ns i n

This evening, the Regional Office of the United States
Porest Service, located in Milwaukee, under the direction of Region-
al Forester, E. V', Tinker, begins a series of broadcasts which,
through the courtesy of ’".I.S.N., will be presented at this same
hour on succeeding alternate Tuesdays,

This Ninth Region of the United States Forest Service com-
prises the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and North Dakota. In these nine states,
forest plans and work are under way for the restoration and conser-
VB.tion of forest resources which will fire your imagination and
stir your active interest,

Uhen I tell you that some 60,000 young men of the COO are
now emplo3''ed in this Region on constructive and valuable v/ork in
connection w'ith this important program of Forest Restoration, and
when you recall that this maj?" easily mean a reduction in the burden
of direct relief by three or four times that manj'' men, women, and
children, the immediate human significance of what is being done is
fully apparent.

Forestry has, of course, and necessarily so, a long range
point of view in addition to the securing of such immediate benefits
as the supplying of work to many thousands of young men. My desire
is to show the living and vital interest which all people, young and
old, well may and should have in both this immediate and long range
work. Forests once depleted and destroyed require a long time to
grov/ again, but just as soon as we start replacing thorn, there is,
at the ver37- beginning, such v/ork as gathering tree seeds, planting
at nurseries to raise seedlings, and the transplanting of these
seedlings to Forest areas. There is improvement - thinning of exist-
ing stands of timber, to remove worthless spocios and thus give
better trees a chance to grow. There is the building of lookout
toxvers from which watch is kept to discover fires at their begin-
ning, and thus prevent their spread. There are roadside menaces
of brush and dovni timber to clean up. There are roads and build-
ings to construct.

During the first t’/o years of their existence in this Region,
tho Civilian Conservation Corps, under the guidance during their
working hours, of trained men of the Forest Service, performed some

fourteen million man days of this useful work. In this v/ay, it
has been demonstrated v/hat an important place forestry can always
take in absorbing usefully, and at once, a considerable portion
of the unempl.oyed in any future emergency. The immeasurable
value of conserving the spirit and character of the youth of the
country in these difficult times lias often been referred to, and
is worthy of being referred to again and again, and it will be,
in a future broadcast, devoted to that draina.tic chapter of our
humanitarian and conservation history. But this evening, it is
the intention to sketch the more general outline, and to fill in
the lights and living details later on in subsequent broadcastSk

The long range vision of Forestry work vias recently ex-
pressed by President Roosevelt, upon his acceptance of the prized
Schlich Forestry Medal, presented to him by the Society of American
Foresters for distinguished service to the cause of Conservation,

He then said,

"I consider the social point of view of Foresters as
most essential to the success of their profession. Forests
require many years to mature; consequently, the long point
of view is necessary’" if the Forests are to bo maintained
for the good of our country. He who would hold this long
point of vievj must realize the need of subordinating im-
mediate profits for the sake of the future public welfare.”

He thus strikingly sets forth the fact that x'lhile the near
view of forestry merges inevitably into the far view, there is
nowhere in its entire compass any shortsightedness,

'Jhat is it than that the United States Forest Service is
attempting to accomplish in this Region, and v<rhy is it worth while
to attempt it, and for all of us to cooperate in it?

To begin with, this portion of the United States was once
our greatest lumber producing section, A large percentage of it
was natural forest, and out of the cutting and use of that then
seemingly inexhaustible supply of trees, there was built the first
material prosperity of these states. Use of these forest resources,
however, was accompanied by waste and destruction. Forest fires
followed like a venging spirit in the v/astes of the Ixmibermen,
hliere activity and teeming life had been, there came to many
places silence and desolation.

Today, instead of being the greatest producer of forest
products, this Region has come to be the greatest consumer of
liimber, but with its ovm supply largely gone, He have in these
states, forty million people, a third of the nation's population,
and Chicago has becom-o the country’s greatest lumber market, while
Cairo is in the center of the national lumber consumption. Yet
this Region, which once supplied the entire nation, having depleted
and exhausted its own matchless storehouse of Forest trees, nov;
pays tribute for its folly in the form of an annual freight bill
of over twenty-five m.illion dollars on liombor brought from the
South and from the Pacific Coast,

-2-

Within this area, a vast original forest, however, the same
years which saw those Forests largely destroyed, has proved con-
clusively that there are yet at least sixty-eight million acres
of almost exclusively forest land, or almost three times the area
of ?Jisconsin, not suitable for agriculture, but whose highest use
is still for the grovring of forest trees. In some estimates, this
figure is placed as high as eighty-three million acres. Nineteen
million acres of such lands are now within the National Forests,
and the boundaries of Purchase Units within the Region,

Various states have recognized that such Forest lands exist,
and have undertaken Forest prograins in varying degrees. All are
constructive, and all vastly helpful. The Federal Government is
coming more and more fully into the campaign for the restoration
of these ancient forest resources. The present United States Forest
Service has been in the work of Conservation for thirty years.

Until the last few years, its greatest field has been in the mount-
ain areas of the West.

Many of us who are now engaged in the Forest Restoration
Program here have been Forest Supervisors and Rangers in that
Rfestern country. But of late, the golden age of Forestry has come
to those Central States, lying about the Great Lakes and along the
Ohio River, and the. head waters and valleys of the Mississippi,

The stress of the times has emphasized that the restoration
of forest cover on lands fitted for that, and not for farming, offers
a tremendous field for the enrployment of labor, x'irhich will, in the
reconstruction of the Forests, at tho same time reconstruct weakened
foundations of our national prosperity. To bring back again to this
Region a part of its forests and to conserve by wise use those which
still exist, will ultimately restore a groat Inmbor industry, but
that is not all,

Tho recreational values of forest areas, the v;ild life of
animals, birds and fish, the keeping of the streams pure, all of
these highly desirable results begin to come very early in tho
forestry program, and they grow in value increasingly v/ith the
years, yet further, there are the influences of Forests in check-
ing the washing away of x’^aluablo soil, and the accompanying help
which Forest cover gives in holding back the waters which other-
mse vxould contribute to disastrous floods.

Forest restoration mil not alone cure all the ills of soil
erosion and floods, but the influence of forests in reducing them
is tremendous and indispensable, Tho importance of this is shovm.
by the fact that on an average every year, enough soil, as to make
one hundred so^uare miles of land three feet deep, is washed doxm
to the mouth of the Mississippi, and that is but a fraction of
what is washed away from denuded lands and left on sand bars and
as silt along the course of that mighty stream. That amount of
soil is a loss each year, and to reduce it by Forestry practice is
both feasible and necessary. Engineering vxorks are also required
to control floods, but even they must heive the assistance of forests
and forage cover at the heads of streams to make the soil absorp-

tive and a supplement to their control.

In a later program, this dramatic and tragic story of soil
loss and flood destruction xvill he told. Tonight, I have only
one more phase of the Forest work which I wish to present. It is
just a glance, which I hope will make you share with us the vision
of xdiat is being planned and accomplished.

All through the once heavily forested portions of these
parts of our countrj^, there are comraunities and homes in difficulty
or even abandoned, because the Forest resources are depleted or
destroyed. This is because fires have exposed the soil to erosion.
In the old days, people in such sections found work in the Forests
to supplement their farming, and by that combination lived comfort-
ably and reasonably well.

It is an objective of ours, and a sound one, to restore and
stabilize many such communities. Our studies show that in these
nine states permanent seasonal work can be given to nearly seventy
thousand heads of families in addition to emergency employment to
many more. In some places, new communities of forest workers may
ultimately be placed on subsistence homesteads.

In all this stabilizing and adding of security to these
American families, sound forestry practice is the key. The story
of how the Forest Service Branch of Lands is laying such plans and
opening up the vrork, of how our Branch of Forest Management is set-
ting the course far into the future, all of these things and more
will come in proper order to shoxv exactly how the Forest Service
is leading forward to practical results.

The time of this broadcast is about to end, but no talk on
forest work should close x^rithout driving home one vital fact. It
is that every plan for the welfare of our country through Forest
Management and Consorvation, every benefit, human and material,
which can thus be planned or accomplished, xvill fail and be lost
if we allow fires to sweep these forest areas as they have done
in the past.

In this Region only about one out of one hundred fires is
caused by lightning. In the northern part of the Region the
average runs about one out of every ten. All except those caused
by lightning are preventable. Let us think of the setting of a
fire in the forest as the putting of a torch of destruction to our
ovm home land.

Every one xvho enters the Forest areas can control himself
and set no forest fire by carolessnoss with camp fires, matches
or cigarettes. Every saxv mill worker, every railroad man, and
settlor can set a guard upon his ovm doing and see to it that no
fire demon is ever, by his carelessness or intention, let loose
in the woods. In brack of it al.l, every citizen - woman, man,
girl, and boy, can be a watchman and a builder of that public
opinion which vail halt the setting of fires. Thus may we all have
a part in the restoration of our Forests for the use and everlast-
ing benefit of us all.

The Forest Service closes its first of a series of broadcast
glad to have questions comiO, and appreciative of your attention.